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The Reviews department includes reviews of publications, films, audio- and videotapes, and exhibits relating to the history of computing. Full-length studies of technical, economic, business, social, and institutional aspects or other works of interest to Annals readers are briefly noted, with appropriate bibliographic information.
Colleagues are encouraged to recommend works they wish to review and to suggest titles to the Reviews editor.
";Babbage and Cryptography. Or, the Mystery of Admiral Beaufort's Cipher,"; Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, Vol. 35, 1993, pp. 327-367.

The Reviews department includes reviews of publications, films, audio- and videotapes, and
exhibits relating to the history of computing. Full-length studies of technical, economic,
business, social, and institutional aspects or other works of interest to Annals readers are briefly
noted, with appropriate bibliographic information.

Colleagues are encouraged to recommend works they wish to review and to suggest titles to the
Reviews editor.

Babbage had planned to write "The Philosophy of Deciphering," but never began it. He left
behind copious worksheets which show how much time he spent on cryptography, but what he
was doing is very unclear. Ole Franksen has done much to help us evaluate Babbage's
cryptographic work and published an interesting and unusual book, Mr. Babbage's Secret: The
Tale of a Cipher -- and APL,' in which his discoveries are well documented. In the article
reviewed here, he restates some of this work and adds more material with the purpose of
illuminating the origin of the Beaufort cipher.

The Vigenere cipher is a stream cipher in which the key stream is a repeated word. Letters are
given numerical values -- for example, from O to 25 in a 26-letter alphabet. The plaintext P and
keystream K are combined to produce ciphertext C by the rule C = P + K, mod 26. This cipher
has been "reinvented" countless times. ~

(Image Omitted: The article raises the question "Did Babbage act as cryptographic expert for
the Royal Navy through his friend Beaufort?" No evidence is given -- it is just a conjecture.)

Beaufort gave us the Beaufort Scale of wind strength; he was an influential and resourceful
person and has also given his name to the Beaufort cipher, a variant of the Vigenere with the
rule C = K - P. mod 26. Decipherment follows the same rule, P = K- C, mod 26, and this could
make it easier to use.

Franksen shows that the attribution of the cipher to Beaufort is uncertain. Indeed, David Kahn
has recorded that it was published in 1710 by Giovanni Sestri. For Beaufort's rediscovery, there
are contemporary references to a publication in a scientific journal, but this seems to be lost. A
published explanation of the cipher by Beaufort's colleague, Lieutenant Becher, proves to be
Vigenere, and the only firm contemporary attribution is on a card, sold for sixpence, written by
Beaufort's son William Morris Beaufort. But Beaufort was an honorable man, and it is likely that
he really did reinvent the cipher known by his name.

The article raises the question "Did Babbage act as cryptographic expert for the Royal Navy
through his friend Beaufort?" but no evidence is given --...